My first newborn pictures with little Eric

A question many clients ask me during newborn portrait sessions is: “How did you decide to start taking newborn pictures?”

How this whole newborn idea started.

Well…it actually all started with a simple university project. During the last year of my BA in Professional Photography, we were asked to set ourselves a project involving any type of photography we wanted. The idea was to research our chosen area and spend an entire year working on this project.

All these years I concentrated on various portraiture projects, but nothing involving children or babies. I always wanted to try it, but didn’t have guts to do it. I didn’t have children at the time and idea of photographing kids was a bit daunting for me.

Let’s do this

My personal aim was to challenge myself by doing something totally different from anything else I had done so far. I knew that I wanted to do social photography, but the only thing in that category I hadn’t tried yet was maternity and newborn pictures – so, that’s exactly what I decided to explore.

I started by looking at the websites of a few American and Australian baby photographers and noticed all these beautiful photos of curled up newborn babies. I was very intrigued by them, and something inside me kept saying, “This is the type of photography I should try.” Plus, I loved idea of creating relationships with my clients and perhaps become their photographer for life. Imagine getting to see how these families grow throughout the years!

At the time, pretty much nobody in the UK offered such photos. There were quite a few photographers who were doing standard 2 month onward baby portraits, but posed newborn photos were few and far between. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew there and then that this would be an exciting direction to take.

My first newborn baby, Eric.

A month later I met my first newborn model, Eric. Oh my god, you can’t imagine how nervous I was! I never realised how small babies can be. Mum handed over this tiny little boy and I tried not to show my surprised face. She knew that this was new project for me and we would be trying many interesting poses.

I took the plunge, worked through the long list of poses I wanted to try, and ended up really enjoying the session. Yes, I was very nervous and, at that point in time, I had never held a baby in my life; but I was confident that I would be able to create an amazing experience and final photos. It was definitely a fun and unique experience. I guess I was lucky – if my first experience had gone badly and I wasn’t able to create the portraits I had in mind, I’m not sure things would have turned out the way they did.

“I am very pleased with the results of Armands work. Great quality, professional approach and a lots of patience during photographing my 10 days new sons newborn pictures. I am definitely going to use his services again. Beautiful family and baby photos. I recommend him!! Big thanks to Armands.”

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I’m really thankful of how this first experience went. I saw how important it is for families to have these photos. At the time, couples would think how nice these are, but now after almost 6 years they think “wow how great it is that we have these first two weeks newborn photos!” Families do get very emotional when we speak about the importance of recording these little moments.

I love what I do. I love to meet new families as we start journey together. I definitely love to see how your family is growing. It is such a treat to meet your kids and meeting their little sisters and brothers. I do think that I could be a photographer for life. Honestly, with hand on heart, I’m so honoured to be part of so many stories and family events.

My journey has started, not only as a photographer, but also as a parent. I’m the proud papa of two beautiful children, and looking back at our newborn baby photos makes me a bit weepy. You realise that they will never be those little curled up babies again. You could cuddle and kiss them as much as you wanted. The smell, the laughs, pink cheeks, and adorable fatty rolls. These enchantments are gone now, and our kids are growing up so quickly. And so the journey changes with time–they become their own little personalities and expore their independence and express their opinons. It is in those quiet times when you can pull out those newborn photos and look how much everything has changed around you. You feel proud, but at the same time a bit sad too. That is why I think every parent should have nice professionally done newborn photos to record all these little details.